Lenovo Mirage Solo and Camera with Daydream Hands-On

Last year Lenovo showed us their Windows Mixed Reality headset. At CES 2018 Lenovo introduced Mirage Solo with Daydream. It is a completely standalone VR headset that runs Daydream. To accompany Mirage Solo with Daydream, Lenovo also announced Mirage Camera which is a point and shoot 4K 180 degree VR camera.

Lenovo Mirage Solo with Daydream has a QHD LCD screen (2560×1440 @ 75Hz), 4GB RAM, 64GB UFS along with dual microphones and a 3.5mm headphone output. Lenses are 2 x Fresnel-Aspheric with 110 degree FOV. All of this is powered by a Snapdragon 835 SoC fueled with a Li-ion 4000mAh battery while weighing only 1.42lbs. The front cameras provide 6DOF tracking, while the controller is 3DOF. If you’re looking to download more apps, or hookup a controller, Mirage Solo with Daydream will support Bluetooth 5.0 + BLE and 802.11ac/n 2×2 MIMO. Lastly if 64GB isn’t enough, there is an available microSD slot that can hold cards up to 256GB.

If Mirage Solo is your fully portable headset, then you should be able to shoot some video that can be played back on the headset. Lenovo Mirage Camera will shoot at 4K/1440P/1080P @ 30fps with dual 13MP cameras, dual microphones, a single speaker and processing support from a Snapdragon 626 SoC. Its sensors track 6 DOF throughout a 180×180 degree FOV and has 16GB eMMC2 storage plus 2GB RAM. A 2200mAh battery provides up to 2 hours of general usage while maintaining a lightweight device at 0.31lbs (WiFi model) and 0.32lbs (LTE model). Connectivity for Mirage Camera includes 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, WiFi Direct and Bluetooth 4.2 + BLE.

We had a chance to try out a few demo apps with the Mirage Solo, and found the experience to be quite impressive. The first experience was viewing a few videos that had been shot on the Mirage Camera. In one video the setting was a birthday party with children running around and party favors everywhere. At one point one of kids hit a balloon towards the camera, and we jumped back a bit due to the realistic feeling of actual depth in the video. Next up was a downhill skiing/snowboarding game that had us leaning back and forth to control our movement. Our next demo was based on the Blade Runner world and took advantage of the 3DOF controller in order to navigate the scene and interact with various objects in the game. The feel of this environment was really cool, and looking up through the cluster of surrounding buildings and seeing the rain coming down was a really cool experience.

Pricing and availability is not yet available for Lenovo Mirage Solo with Daydream or Lenovo Mirage Camera.